Tag Archives: class warfare

This past election, Barrack Obama and the DNC-loyals were attacking Mitt Romney and other business people for shipping jobs overseas. Like most patriotic Americans, it upsets me to see jobs leave the United States as well. But was this really a fair criticism of business owners?

As a former entrepreneur myself, let me give you an analogy. This criticism is akin to farting while sitting next to me, then getting upset when I leave because you’ve made the room smell like three-month-old milk and despair.

If we were a statist nation like former Russia, China, Cuba, etc., businesses would exist to serve the state; something many on the left seem to wish were the case here—you know, the people who supported millionaire capitalist Michael Moore by attending his movies bashing capitalism yet fail to see the hypocrisy in that?

The reason I believe this idea is so ridiculous, is because despite my requests, not one of these people can name a statist nation whose people don’t live in absolute squalor. Note that Russia’s GDP has nearly quadrupled in the last 12 years, and they’re budding ideas on capitalism are still being ironed out. So I’ll be happy to consider statism a practical system of governance for maintaining quality of life and basic human rights when a successful example arises.

In our capitalist system however, businesses are the product of a risk an entrepreneur takes to offer a good or service to the public to make a living for themselves, as opposed to working at the behest of someone else. We all know that the greater the risk, the greater possibility for reward. This carrot on a stick is what makes entrepreneurs take such a risk.

So to explain my flatulence analogy; America has the third highest corporate tax rate on the planet. We also have one of the most intrusive regulatory networks as well, thanks to NHTSA, OSHA, the EPA, and other federal and local legislations and regulators. Add labor unions to that, which infect businesses like a cancer feeding off the host until the Hostess dies. All these roadblocks make America a very expensive place to do business. So how is it fair to blame people who leave America when we make it such an inhospitable place to do business?

Let’s ignore all the ideology for a moment and think about this skeptically and empathetically. What are some of the issues of doing business outside the United States?:

There are regulatory issues of your home country and the one you’re doing business in, requiring you to hire a plethora of compliance lawyers and staff just to make sure what you are doing is even legal.

Language barriers exist for nations that do not have English as their primary language.

Shipping, tariffs, and customs expenses increase.

Massive expenses in building a new facility and moving operations from a U.S. based plant to a foreign one.

Travel expenses increase for those headquartered in the United States that have to often visit overseas facilities.

Loss in quality assurances due to lack of direct oversight.

These are but a few issues I can think of off the top of my head; certainly there are many more. So if all these issues exist, why even do it? Because doing it is still more profitable than doing business here in the United States. Stop and think about that for a minute—let it fester in any liberty-minded bones you have in your body. If you’re like me, it should offend you to the core.

Because we are one of the richest nations in the world, American workers are not going to work for the pennies a day that some third world nations consider a reasonable salary, so if we intend to compete in the world market, you’d like to think our legislators would make every effort to overcome our higher wage demands by keeping corporate taxes and regulations as unobtrusive as possible so we can be competitive. Greater expenses make it more expensive to the consumer. Yet, during the election, the people like Mitt Romney were vilified as heartless rich bastards for attempting to rectify this.

I propose we start calling out those who want to bash the rich, playing the hero while doing it. This pure ignorance of economics, history, and logic is offensive. Our economy depends on people with money investing in American products and workers. But why would they when we treat them like dirt, tax them to hell and back, and regulate them like a dog on a choker chain dying to run ahead of its master?

If you’ve ever been in the middle of a productive task and had someone interrupt to “help” you, only to slow you down and make matters worse, then you should inherently understand what government does to entrepreneurship every single day.

Unless we vote for liberty minded candidates, entrepreneurs will observe the basic physics principle of taking the path of least resistance. We have no one to blame but ourselves for electing and re-electing those who are content to push them away to pass “feel-good” legislation that is a product of jealousy as opposed to evidence based hypotheses. When emotion trumps logic, we all lose.

Your humble correspondent fancies himself a decent golfer with a higher than average passion for the game. While I live on a modest income, I am a bit of a golf snob. I have Perrier tastes on a well-water budget, but whenever I get a chance, I drop a dime or 700 on a nice round somewhere.

As I was growing up in a modest income household, I was ingrained with the idea, by family and friends, that rich people got rich by taking advantage of the poor. Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island may have been fictional, but as a young and highly ignorant boy, for all I knew, that was basically how rich people were because that’s what the populace painted them out to be. Growing up in the 70’s; gays, blacks, and women were painted out to be a certain way too unfortunately. There’s a lesson here, but more on that later.

Thurston Howell III played by Jim Backus

As I started getting into golf, I had a boss invite me to Heritage Golf Club in Hilliard Ohio. I was a little nervous, but I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to play at my first private club. So off I went, in my nicest golf apparel, having spent hours at the driving range getting my swing in peak form so as not to get scoffed at by what was surely going to be a group of scratch golfers.

As I walk in, the staff treat me like royalty. It’s not that they knew me, I was a guest not a member, but that didn’t matter. A private golf club is like any business. They don’t get paid to exist, they get paid by keeping membership up. They do that by treating guests as if they’re all Tiger Woods in hopes that those guests will return, or better yet, join. Yay for capitalism!

But here’s the other thing. The members we played with were incredibly nice also. Most members were what I’d call “doing well” but not rich, and it turns out their golf skills were about average like anywhere else. This was a sub $10,000 a year club, not one for the richest of the rich, but it still got me thinking—every member here makes more money than I do, yet no one looked down on me. I was nervous for no reason!

Heritage Golf Club

So as I continued to get better and meet people in the local golf community, I happened to befriend someone who was a member at New Albany Country Club. It is a Jack Nicklaus designed club, with grass tennis courts, a croquet court, an immense clubhouse, an incredible 27 holes laid out among million dollar homes, and a membership that requires you liquidate yourself of approximately six figures to join.

He invited me to play, and off I went. So here comes your humble correspondent, rolling up like Fred Sanford through Beverly Hills, in a 20-year-old rust colored Acura Legend. Not painted the color rust mind you, but a 20-years-of-driving-in-Ohio-winters shade of rust. As I pull into the parking lot, the high-school kids of members are driving two-year old BMW 3-series, and the adults were driving Porsche’s, 6-series BMWs and other highly exclusive cars. I was clearly out of my element.

As I pull up, the boy working the bag drop walks up, offers to take my clubs, sets me up with a cart, and off I go for my round. Again, everyone from the staff to the other members were as polite as can be with no hint of snobbery to be found. They could see I had a passion for the game, a decent swing, and a respect for the course. They didn’t care about my social status, they cared about my character. Imagine that.

New Albany Country Club

My point to all of this being; we all know that bigotry against a race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion is wrong. These days, you’re quite likely to get looked down upon for any such behavior. Yet somehow, those on the left get away with lies and bigotry every day about the affluent among us. Bigoted hate is wrong, no matter who it is directed at, yet somehow class warfare is the one form of hate that is still widely accepted and that has to change.

My favorite quote that I repeat often is from Martin Luther King stating that you should judge someone by the content of their character. It turns out that while he may have added, not the color of their skin, I believe he understood bigotry in any form is wrong.

Are there bad people in the rich, poor, black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight, female, male, etc. communities? Of course there are. Should we assume that one of them is a certain way because they’re in that community? Only if you’re a bigot.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Many people try to speculate why America is such a great nation. But like most things in life the answer to that question is quite complicated:

We have an amazing constitution which gives the government power from the people, not the other way around.

We have an amazing military that assures that anyone who comes after us will have a rocket shoved up their rectum and sent to the moon.

We have an amazing geographical location with a wealth of different climates to support many different industries, power generation, and farming.

Despite leftist agendas, we still have unalienable rights.

But the one thing that I think makes America truly amazing, is our diversity.

From state to state, city to city, region to region, you will find natural citizens, non-natural citizens, and guest workers from many walks of life. Most have a great story to tell, and with the exception of those of us already born here, most are here in order to make a better life for themselves. People motivated to be great, make us a great nation!

So do me a favor: If you’re someone who has hate in your heart for someone you haven’t even met yet, try a social experiment. Say hello and strike up a conversation with someone you would otherwise avoid. Thurston Howell might turn out to be just a cool dude with a great idea that made him rich. Unless someone is part of a hate group like the Black Panthers, et al., you’ll likely find what I did at the private golf clubs: good people exist in all walks of life and everyone should be judged solely by the content of their character—period.

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts … good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with. – Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama

This quote strikes me as odd. Michelle Obama is absolutely right. I echoed this sentiment in my column Bad Friends too. So I don’t want to belabor or revisit that point.

However, this is a sign that Michelle Obama’s ideals seem to be in conflict with one another. Because her and her husband continue to promote two virtues that are in direct contradiction to this thought.

The big-government mentality these days continues to paint the narrative that everyone is poor because they are not given a fair shot. I don’t know about you, but every time I hear this, I keep thinking to myself, “Mr President, may I buy you a mirror?”

Random Mirror

We have the son of financially modest parents, who is of mixed race, as president of the United States. If this isn’t one of the greatest lands of opportunity for all people on this planet, how the H-E-double hockey sticks is this man even president? We may have a sketchy past with how we treated other races and women, but so do other countries. However, if you look at us now, we are clearly the country to be in if you want to make it big.

If you disagree with me, feel free to name one country more foreigners attempt to migrate to than the United States. When you’ve found one, let me know. They don’t come here because they like a challenge and it was just too easy in their own homeland. They come here because we have a wealth of pretty humble people who turned nothing into something big—really big. That opportunity is solely because of the freedom America provides that the left, and some Republicans of late, seem to be so dead set on taking away.

America and its Constitution guarantees you many rights, one specifically enumerated being liberty. Liberty encompasses so much that it’s hard to even fathom, but opportunity is a huge part of it. So while it’s fashionable to say that people who are poor and unsuccessful are victims, I know too many alcoholics, drug users, people too lazy to work, people too unmotivated, too unambitious, and people to mean-spirited to make friends and get ahead, that I cannot begin to entertain the idea that every person below the median income is a victim.

The United States Constitution

What I don’t know is someone who has impeccable business sense, pure genius, supremely motivated, and is a good decision maker, yet somehow success always eludes them. I know they’re out there, but if you want to convince me that there are more of them, than there are people of the “I like to shoot myself in the foot” variety, I’m going to say that you are “honesty-challenged.”

So with that being said, why do the Obama’s try to appeal to the people who have done the least at the expense of those who have done the most? I’m not a psychiatrist, and I say this with serious trepidation as I cannot know what’s in their heart, but I feel like they are consummate politicians who are more concerned with winning than with what is right and just. I try to see the best in people, including the Obama’s, but this last election cycle has shown me that honesty and character are qualities they too often lack.

My other point is that they love to play the class warfare game as if it’s part of their religion. They scoff endlessly at people with money who have worked hard and achieved success. How did these people become so successful? I have news for you Michelle, they got it by following your advice in the above quote. They purged bad influences from their life, cut their losses with people who weighed them down, sent leeches packing, and rid themselves of people who polluted their attitude with bad mojo. Yet instead of pointing to these people as an inspiration, you point to them as if they’re the sworn enemy of the working man.

Never mind that they create all the jobs, provide all the products we enjoy, pay almost all of the taxes, and serve as inspiration to every immigrant and entrepreneur that comes to this great land; they’re somehow the problem?

Ellis Island

I pride myself in trying to be a person who uses logic and reasoning to make well thought out points, and not just throw out hyperbole, ad hominem attacks, and other logical fallacies. But as much as I try to divorce myself from passion, this disgusting tactic of attacking the people who are successful and insinuating they’re the ones keeping the masses down infuriates me.

So Michelle, if you believe what you say, then get big government out of our way. Let successfully minded people be successful, and let failures fail. Good people fail all of the time, and they often rebound from it better, stronger, and faster. Anyone who has ever gotten fired from one job, had their ego pummeled, then parlayed that termination into an even better career and never looked back, knows I’m right.

Conversely, let the ne’er-do-wells do whatever it is they’re going to do and live or die with the results. If they’re good people, I assure their family and friends will help them if they’re at least trying to help themselves. I know this from personal experience after my own failures.

I’m not going to make the argument that there are no victims out there who are doing bad through no fault of their own, nor am I making the argument that everyone with money is a wonderful human being. The fact is every social class, race, sex, religion, or any other discriminate group has its share of good and bad people. But I do know this: by and large people reap the rewards of their efforts, or feel the pain of their lack of effort more often than not. In a land of opportunity, it takes a lot of effort to succeed. If you don’t have that motivation, then that’s not Bill Gates’ fault. That’s on you.

log·i·cal: capable of reasoning or of using reason in an orderly cogent fashion lib·er·tar·i·an: an advocate of the doctrine of free will; a person who upholds the principles of individual liberty especially of thought and action